Just this morning Leila scared up this brilliant bird, a Brewster’s Warbler, as best we can tell. It hung around only long enough to rest its legs and allow us a few photos and some gentle caresses with our eager fingers. That the cat Ruby was spotted nearby shortly after we left the traveler to rest is a sobering suggestion of what the yellow-tufted warbler’s fate might be. So it goes here on the Acres, though we all agree that Ruby should focus far more on the mice ravaging our pantry than on the dizzying array of songbirds that have been passing the Spring days with us.

Also filed under “Things Leila Has Scared up Recently” is this tiny bunny. We all took our turn passing it around before returning it to the wild. This just in: Isadora informs me that the bunny was returned to my garden, which I deeply regret.

Our days of late have been full to the brim of unexpected discoveries of the natural kind. Eager to find some morel mushrooms (which we didn’t) or more ramps (nope), we set out for a lunch time hike earlier this week. This hollow tree was home to a small skull the last time we ventured this way — last week, perhaps — so Captain Daddio took a peek to see if it was still there. It wasn’t.

What he found instead is what we believe to be a broody vulture hen. It’s likely that she’s sitting on a clutch of soon-to-be vultures (turkey vultures?) and her determination at seeing that task through was stronger than her desire to flee when this family of yahoos each took their turn peeking in at her.

We returned to a familiar spot where beavers have been hard at work taking down cherry trees. We never dreamed we could actually catch one of them in the act – this is a typical, but rare Blond Beaver, common only to this stretch of woods and identified by the unmistakeable Halloween-themed flannel pants. What a sighting!

We also found evidence of another forest-dwelling creature, who emerged from this hollow tree with more than a little difficulty after being spotted. It looks to me to be the kind of tree dwelling where a colony of Keebler elves might start a cottage industry cookie business, no? What a fantastic tree.

I gathered from later conversation that she had no knowledge of such an operation within her tree.